Toxic Differential: 2016 NFL Season

Toxic Differential is a statistic in football used to measure a team on their ability in creating and preventing both turnovers and explosive plays. Toxic Differential is calculated by adding together a teams turnover differential (takeaways - giveaways) and its big play differential (big plays for - big plays against).

Toxic differential is a combination of three different differential statistics:

1) Turnover differential, which is the difference between the total number of takeaways (opponent turnovers) less the total number of giveaways (team turnovers.

2) Passing Big Play differential, which is the difference between the total number of passing plays of 25+ yards by the team less the total number of passing plays of 25+ yards the team gave up.

3) Rushing Big Play differential, which is the difference between the total number of rushing plays of 10+ yards by the team less the total number of rushing plays of 10+ yards the team gave up.

Simply add these three up.

A higher toxic differential is better.

More about Toxic Differential

The statistic was created by Super Bowl winning coach Brian Billick while he was offensive coordinator with the Minnesota Vikings. He's quoted as saying "It’s not merely good enough to avoid turning the ball over; you need to generate big offensive plays as well."

The holy grail is having a double positive, in other words a team is winning the turnover differential AND the explosive play differential. Over the last 15+ seasons, a majority of teams that have won the Super Bowl finished the regular season in the Top 10 for Toxic Differential.